Rogue Clone: The Clone Betrayal Part 27

"Beta, report?"

"We have control of Engineering, sir."

"That's it?" I asked.

"We killed a guy."

"Any prisoners?" I asked.

"Yeah, sixty-three of 'em. There was a guy who took a swing at me with a wrench, but everyone else gave up without a fight."

Sixty-three men in Engineering? I didn't know you could operate a battleship with so small a crew.

"Captain, we have secured the lower decks." It was the Delta Team leader.

"Any problems at the Marine compound?" I asked. The Marines would be stowed on the bottom deck.

"The deck was empty, sir."

"There are no Marines in the compound?" I asked.

"It's an empty s.p.a.ce, sir. The whole compound is empty. There aren't even any racks in the barracks."

I considered this as we reached the bridge. The captain of the ship could have sealed off the bridge, but he didn't. The hatch stood wide open, revealing a huge floor that looked like an office complex. There were desks and dividers and computers. You did not fly a ship like this with a flight stick or yoke; even the combat maneuvers were programmed into a computer.

We had not seen any real resistance. On the bridge, the captain of the ship made his stand as best he could. He met us at the entrance, flanked by six men carrying M27s. He and the two armed men beside him wore the khaki uniforms of officers-a one-star admiral with a captain and a commander by his side. The four men behind them were simple seamen.

"What is the meaning of this, clone?" The old man spat out the words as he approached us. Annoyance showed in his eyes. Fear showed in the eyes of the men around him.

Seeing this angry old man's composure, I felt my nerve slip just a bit. "I am commandeering your ship."

"Clone, this is treason." He used the word "clone" twice, and I suspected he would use it again. He wanted to trigger a death reflex, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"I'm not going to have a death reflex," I said, "but if I hear you say that word one more time, I will shoot you on the spot."

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," the old man said. "You're behind this, aren't you? You're that Liberator clone." I got the feeling that last use of "clone" had just slipped out and did not shoot.

Trying to sound more confident than I felt, I said, "Tell your men to lay down their arms."

"And then what? You've already committed treason, how about murder? How many of my men have you already killed?"

"Admiral, I am running out of patience."

The admiral told his men to drop their weapons with no more than a nod. Then he said, "You do know they will come for you? You can't possibly get away with this."

"They were always going to come for us," I said. "We were sent here for combat exercises."

When the admiral heard this, his raised his eyes to my face and took a half step backward. That was the only sign of fear I ever saw from the man. "You're d.a.m.n right you were, and you will get everything you have coming to you."

The admiral surrendered the bridge, and we captured three battleships without taking a single casualty. In the back of my mind, though, I asked myself, What have I done?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Perry Fahey, now wearing full face makeup that included lipstick, rouge, and false eyelashes along with mascara, opened the next staff meeting with, "Captain Harris, I hear congratulations are in order. You managed to hijack three ships filled with unarmed sailors on a peaceful mission without losing a single man. That's quite an accomplishment. What's next on your agenda, blowing up a school for girls?"

I wanted to kick the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's chair out from under him, but that was what he wanted as well. He wanted to provoke me into a fight, then claim I was not ready to command. Instead, I smiled, and said, "You said that entire line without stuttering or wetting your pants, Senior Chief. Well done."

"I, I don't stutter," Fahey said.

"Really? You stuttered up a storm at our last meeting," I said.

It was a childish display on both our parts, but I got what I wanted. I stopped myself from lashing out with my fists.

Warshaw and Franks sat impa.s.sive, watching to see what Fahey would do next. I remained silent, waiting for the same.

What Fahey said next let me know that I was not the only person worrying about whether it had been a mistake to start this war. "You got us in a specking war." He looked at Warshaw and Franks for support, then added, "What are you going to do next, bomb Terraneau?"

Franks laughed.

Maybe they had rehea.r.s.ed the whole thing. Fahey's outburst gave Warshaw the opportunity to position himself as an officer-statesmen. Neither laughing nor smiling, he said, "You did a.s.sure me that those ships had come to fight."

"No, Master Chief, I never said any such thing. I said that the Unified Authority plans to use our fleet to practice maneuvers."

"There weren't even any Marines on board those ships. It seems clear to me that they did not come to fight," Warshaw said. He spoke slowly, showing restraint.

Fahey didn't bother with things like restraint. "They won't make that mistake again, now, will they?"

I turned to Fahey, and said, "The Earth Fleet has thirty-two battle . . . excuse me, as of two days ago the fleet has twenty-nine self-broadcasting battleships. It has twenty-five self-broadcasting destroyers, and a few self-broadcasting cruisers. How many battleships do we have?"

Warshaw and his crew sat mute.

Hollingsworth leaned forward, and said, "I believe we have ninety battleships, sir."

"Ninety, you say?" I asked. "Ninety?" I pretended to fumble with a complex mathematical equation. "Why, ninety, that's more than thirty!"

Thomer chipped in. "I believe it is three times more, sir."

"Three times, you say?" Then, dropping my momentary befuddlement, I turned to Warshaw, and said, "I don't expect they'll make too much of a fuss over those ships."

"So which is it, Harris? You don't get it both ways. Are we so much stronger than them that they're afraid to come after us, or are they planning to use us for target practice?" Franks asked that question. If the son of a b.i.t.c.h a.n.a.lyzed and responded this effectively in battle, he'd make a h.e.l.l of a captain.

"They're not ready to attack us just yet," I said.

"This is why the Navy always commands." Warshaw p.r.o.nounced his edict with a regal att.i.tude. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed a hand across his chin. "I suppose we're both guilty on this one. I should have known better than to listen to you."

With the Broadcast Network down, the Navy would not be able to verify the fate of those battleships without sending ships out to investigate. In a few hours, the bra.s.s would realize that their three battleships were not coming back. They would suspend any flights pending an investigation. Once Intelligence determined that we had commandeered their ships, they would abort the transfer entirely.

For all intents and purposes, I had received my field promotion to general. Warshaw was now an acting admiral, and though our ranks were similar, our authority was not. He commanded the ships. I commanded the Marines, a body of fighting men that he and his sailors considered just another form of cargo.

Warshaw would do whatever he thought he needed to preserve his command. The next time I left the ship, for instance, I might not be allowed back.

I left the conference room and headed for the Marine compound, Thomer and Hollingsworth in tow.

"Okay, Sergeant Hollingsworth, why in h.e.l.l was Fahey in full drag? The b.i.t.c.h was wearing everything but a dress and wig," I said.

"Why are you asking me?" Hollingsworth protested.

"You said you knew him. You said he's a good man."

"That doesn't specking make me his fashion consultant."

"Okay, fine. Why do you think he came to the meeting like that?" I asked.

"It seems pretty obvious."

"It does?" I asked.

"You confiscated makeup from the b.i.t.c.hes on this ship. He came in kabuki face to show that he isn't scared of you. It seems pretty obvious."

"Yeah, I should have known it was something like that," I admitted. Now that he pointed it out, it did seem obvious.

"Do you want to go get drunk?" Thomer asked.

"Not today," I said. I needed to stay sober and think about my next move.

"How about you?" Thomer asked Hollingsworth.

"Sounds good," Hollingsworth said.

"You don't mind if we get drunk?" Hollingsworth asked me.

I laughed and told them to enjoy their last minutes as enlisted men. By the time they returned from the bar, they would be a brigadier general and a full-bird colonel.

So I returned to my billet to relax. I took off my shoes and stripped out of my uniform. An hour-long nap sounded good, then maybe a meal. First things first, though; I needed rest. After turning off the lights, I climbed into my rack, then groped along the table beside my bed until I found the pair of mediaLink shades that I had checked out from the commis sary. The shades let me tap into the ship's media center. Since returning from Terraneau, I had been reading the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not.

Poison-mixers? "That shows what you know," I muttered to the Nietzsche in my head.

The soft ring of my communications console broke into my thoughts. When I answered, Warshaw asked me to come to the bridge.

"What is it?" I asked.

"You're either a prophet, Harris, or you've gotten us all killed," he said.

"More U.A. ships?" I asked as I climbed out of bed.

"A lot of them."

"How many is a lot?" I asked.

"Twenty battleships."

I had my blouse b.u.t.toned and my pants up. Stepping into my shoes, I said, "That's half their fleet."

"There's no backing out now, Harris," Warshaw said. "I hope you were right about everything."

It took me five minutes to get from my billet to the bridge. Warshaw and one of his top NCOs, Senior Chief Hank Bishop, met me at the lift when I arrived. Well, he had been a senior chief. Now that we had broken relations with Washington, Bishop was the captain of the Kamehameha.

Warshaw had not yet ordered the call to quarters, but the bridge was on full alert. Technicians ran system checks and radar sweeps. Amber lights flashed on several computer consoles.

Warshaw led me to a large table in the center of the bridge. On the table, a holographic display showed our fleet and the intruders as quarter-inch three-dimensional models on a green-and-black grid. Our ships filled the center of the grid. The U.A. ships moved along the edge of the display.

"Why haven't you sounded the alarms?" I asked.

"If we sound general quarters, they'll hear it," Bishop said. "The fleetCom system notifies all U.A. ships in the area when one ship sounds general quarters."

"What's so bad about that?" I asked.

"That's not how we do things in the Navy," Warshaw said. "We don't go off half-c.o.c.ked."

I wanted to tell Warshaw to get specked, but I controlled myself. "I don't see what's wrong with telling them we're ready for a fight. They came here looking for a fight; we should let them know that we're willing to give it to them."

"They will take it as a sign of guilt . . . like we have something to hide," Warshaw said. He turned and faced me, fury flashing in his eyes. "Why the h.e.l.l do I bother even trying to explain these things to a Marine?"

"Because you need me as much as I need you."

"For now," Warshaw said, calming slightly. "Here is the situation, Harris. They sent two unarmed research vessels to look for their ships. The only contact we have had was with those first ships. They asked us if we knew what happened to their battleships. We told them that we haven't seen them.

"Apparently they don't believe us," Warshaw said pointing to the display.

I shook my head. "Twenty self-broadcasting ships. If we could take them . . ."

"We can't," Warshaw said. "If we make a move, they'll broadcast out."

I expected a show of force. As the staff meeting ended, I had said as much, but I had not expected twenty ships. That was half their fleet. Even with twenty ships, they would not have any leverage. Not on our turf. They might make some hollow demands, but we would say, "No," and their self-broadcasting fleet would return to Earth with its tail between its legs . . . figuratively speaking. Sending so many ships had been a mistake, it made them look weak.

On the holographic display, the ships meandered around empty s.p.a.ce. They could have been looking for debris or maybe the radioactive signature of a broadcast engine.

"What would you do if you were in their shoes?" Bishop asked me. "What if an enemy stole three of your tanks?"

"They don't have a hound's breath of a chance against us, not with only twenty battleships," I pointed out.